Archive for November, 2009

Checking Motor Mounts

From the driveline vibration video yesterday it seemed like there was excessive play up front.  So today I took a video to check the motor mounts.  I popped it in gear and held the brakes and revved the motor up a few times.  Then I popped it into reverse and did the same thing.  The motor mounts seems ok, although a little soft.

Checking the Driveshaft

There is an odd vibration happening when the car shifts from first to second – at the bottom of second there is some pretty intense vibration that goes away as the RPM increases. The guy who sold me the car said it has a bad u-joint. So I jacked up the rear of the car and took some videos of the front and rear of the driveshaft while loading the motor against the brakes – to see if I can catch what is going on.

It didn’t really show anything except some odd front to back movement at the transmission. So next I popped open the hood and checked the motor loaded against the brake in forward and in reverse to see if a motor mount is broken.

Motor mounts seem ok, although a bit soft.

Slow Sunday Drive

Today my Thanksgiving vacation officially starts!  I took the Dart for a slow cruise around the neighborhood.  Nothing seems amiss – the wheels stayed on!  :-)

Front End Greased and Tightened Up

I just finished greasing up the ball joints (had to put together the grease gun, etc).  And I also tightened all the castle nuts and put the cotter pins in them.  I had to use a washer on one of the ball joint castle nuts – tightening it made the nut go way below the hole.  So I added a washer to space the nut up and get the castle part of it level with the hole when its tight.  I tightened all the other bolts (upper arm adjusters, radius rod, shocks, etc).  I think it is just about ready for a test drive around the block.  I’m going to eat a little bit of lunch first before I do that.

R1A Block Pictures

Ryan Johnson over at Shady Dell Speed Shop just took some pictures of the R1A block I bought.  Here they are:

100_1446
100_1447
100_1448
100_1449